Interviews

Capcom's Yoshinori Ono on Street Fighter IV

GameSpy: What about balance tweaks and those sorts of updates? Nowadays, it's a lot easier to maintain game balance thanks to Internet-connected consoles, compared to when you had to plug chips into arcade boards. Are you planning on supporting Street Fighter IV on that level?

Yoshinori Ono: It really depends on the reaction from the community. If the community wants us to update or tweak something, we're open to it, but we're going to monitor the game's status for at least six months before we do anything.

GameSpy: What do you think of the online fighting scene as it currently exists?

Yoshinori Ono: The fighting game community is in decline, and we don't really want to cannibalize it as such. What we want to do is recruit the lapsed generation that played Street Fighter II and bolster the community and revive the fighting genre.

GameSpy: Why is it that fighting games haven't fostered competitive online communities to the level that other genres have?

Yoshinori Ono: I don't agree that fighting games haven't amassed communities that match other genres'. With Halo or Call of Duty, you're obviously talking about team play and co-op play, and that doubles or triples the numbers of people that gather in these communities. However, fighting games are based on one-on-one combat. Perhaps the communities are smaller, but they're no less passionate.

My dream is that Capcom, along with Namco and Sega and other publishers, will revive the fighting community so that it remains level, as opposed to growing and shrinking as new games come and go. I'd love for Street Fighter IV to be like a board game in that you can always count on someone you visit having it, and bringing it out when company comes over.

GameSpy: These days, big social games come in big packages, complete with expensive peripherals. In light of Capcom's announcement of its partnership with Mad Catz, can we assume that this is the approach you're taking with Street Fighter IV?

Yoshinori Ono: It would be more helpful for the wider audience to give them the option -- they won't have to buy it with a joystick. That might be intimidating for the grandpa and grandkids who want to play together. But we are cooking up some prototype joysticks. But we'll sell them separately.